Scientific Words You're Probably Using Wrong

          We humans tend to be a curious bunch. It's in our nature to look for patterns and come up with explanations that help us make sense of the world around us. But unless we spend our days testing and retesting our ideas in a research laboratory, many of us take a fair amount of poetic license with the scientific terms we use in our everyday speech.
          Do you have a theory that your car knows when you have extra money (and suddenly needs repairs in that exact amount)? Do you have a genetic predisposition to getting lost because your mother was the same way?
          While it may seem harmless to embrace our own interpretation of scientific words and concepts in casual conversation, knowing what those words actually mean in the field of science can help us better understand studies and articles about things like our health, the environment and even the economy.
         Have you been bragging about your company's exponential growth? Do you view your last four summer vacations as proof that it always rains when you go to the beach?

Proof-Evidence

Hypothesis-If you've ever completed -- or helped your kids with -- a science fair project, you probably remember learning that your hypothesis should be a testable statement that can be supported or refuted through experimentation. But in everyday speech, we often use the word hypothesis to describe an educated guess. The two aren't entirely unrelated: Like an educated guess, a hypothesis is based on logic, observation and maybe even intuition, but the most important characteristic of a hypothesis is that it can be tested and the test, in turn, can be replicated.
           A hypothesis is a scientist's attempt to provide a solution or explanation for a phenomenon that has not yet been explained .
          Of course, after reading the first scientific term on our list, you know that in science, a hypothesis is never "proved" to be correct; it's simply supported or refuted through repeated experimentation and observation – sometimes several decades' worth.
         In the scientific method, a hypothesis is just the very first baby step toward formulating the next term on our list.
          In the scientific method, a hypothesis is just the very first baby step toward formulating the next term on our list.
Theory-
           If you want to see smoke come out of a scientist's ears (figuratively speaking, of course), tell him or her that evolution (or gravity, for that matter) is "just a theory." In casual conversation, a theory may be just an idea, but in science, it's a system of ideas that stands up to repeated challenges.
           Some people may try to dismiss widely accepted theories of global warming and evolution as merely speculative. But while a theory can never be "proven" (because this is science!), it's far from mere speculation. A scientific theory may incorporate several related hypotheses, gradually gaining acceptance only after being tested and supported through reproducible observation and experimentation.
Another concept closely associated with a theory is a scientific law. One simple way to remember the two is that a law explains what will happen; theories seek to explain why it happens. Laws can often be expressed as mathematical equations. For example, Newton's law of gravity predicts what will happen if we drop an object, but it doesn't tell us why it happens. For that, we use Einstein's theory of general relativity.